Configuring the Serial Port

Written by Thong D. Nguyen Monday, 23 August 2010 06:52

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This chapter discusses how to configure a serial port from C using the POSIX termios interface.

This is the second part of topic "Serial Programming Guide for POSIX Operation System". Source: http://www.easysw.com/~mike/serial/serial.html

The POSIX Terminal Interface

Most systems support the POSIX terminal (serial) interface for changing parameters such as baud rate, character size, and so on. The first thing you need to do is include the file <termios.h>; this defines the terminal control structure as well as the POSIX control functions.

The two most important POSIX functions are tcgetattr(3) and tcsetattr(3). These get and set terminal attributes, respectively; you provide a pointer to a termios structure that contains all of the serial options available:

Control Options

The c_cflag member controls the baud rate, number of data bits, parity, stop bits, and hardware flow control. There are constants for all of the supported configurations.

The c_cflag member contains two options that should always be enabled, CLOCAL and CREAD. These will ensure that your program does not become the 'owner' of the port subject to sporatic job control and hangup signals, and also that the serial interface driver will read incoming data bytes.

The baud rate constants (CBAUD, B9600, etc.) are used for older interfaces that lack the c_ispeed and c_ospeed members. See the next section for information on the POSIX functions used to set the baud rate.

Never initialize the c_cflag (or any other flag) member directly; you should always use the bitwise AND, OR, and NOT operators to set or clear bits in the members. Different operating system versions (and even patches) can and do use the bits differently, so using the bitwise operators will prevent you from clobbering a bit flag that is needed in a newer serial driver.

Setting the Baud Rate

The baud rate is stored in different places depending on the operating system. Older interfaces store the baud rate in the c_cflag member using one of the baud rate constants in table 4, while newer implementations provide the c_ispeed and c_ospeed members that contain the actual baud rate value.

The cfsetospeed(3) and cfsetispeed(3) functions are provided to set the baud rate in the termios structure regardless of the underlying operating system interface. Typically you'd use the code in Listing 2 to set the baud rate.

Listing 2 - Setting the baud rate.

    struct termios options;

    /*
     * Get the current options for the port...
     */

    tcgetattr(fd, &options);

    /*
     * Set the baud rates to 19200...
     */

    cfsetispeed(&options, B19200);
    cfsetospeed(&options, B19200);

    /*
     * Enable the receiver and set local mode...
     */

    options.c_cflag |= (CLOCAL | CREAD);

    /*
     * Set the new options for the port...
     */

    tcsetattr(fd, TCSANOW, &options);

The tcgetattr(3) function fills the termios structure you provide with the current serial port configuration. After we set the baud rates and enable local mode and serial data receipt, we select the new configuration using tcsetattr(3). The TCSANOW constant specifies that all changes should occur immediately without waiting for output data to finish sending or input data to finish receiving. There are other constants to wait for input and output to finish or to flush the input and output buffers.

Most systems do not support different input and output speeds, so be sure to set both to the same value for maximum portability.

Setting the Character Size

Unlike the baud rate, there is no convienience function to set the character size. Instead you must do a little bitmasking to set things up. The character size is specified in bits:

    options.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE; /* Mask the character size bits */
    options.c_cflag |= CS8;    /* Select 8 data bits */

Setting Parity Checking

Like the character size you must manually set the parity enable and parity type bits. UNIX serial drivers support even, odd, and no parity bit generation. Space parity can be simulated with clever coding.

• No parity (8N1):

  options.c_cflag &= ~PARENB
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSTOPB
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE;
  options.c_cflag |= CS8;
  

• Even parity (7E1):

  options.c_cflag |= PARENB
  options.c_cflag &= ~PARODD
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSTOPB
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE;
  options.c_cflag |= CS7;
  

• Odd parity (7O1):

  options.c_cflag |= PARENB
  options.c_cflag |= PARODD
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSTOPB
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE;
  options.c_cflag |= CS7;
  

• Space parity is setup the same as no parity (7S1):

  options.c_cflag &= ~PARENB
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSTOPB
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE;
  options.c_cflag |= CS8;
  

Setting Hardware Flow Control

Some versions of UNIX support hardware flow control using the CTS (Clear To Send) and RTS (Request To Send) signal lines. If the CNEW_RTSCTS or CRTSCTS constants are defined on your system then hardware flow control is probably supported. Do the following to enable hardware flow control:

    options.c_cflag |= CNEW_RTSCTS;    /* Also called CRTSCTS */

Similarly, to disable hardware flow control:

    options.c_cflag &= ~CNEW_RTSCTS;

Local Options

The local modes member c_lflag controls how input characters are managed by the serial driver. In general you will configure the c_lflag member for canonical or raw input.

Choosing Canonical Input

Canonical input is line-oriented. Input characters are put into a buffer which can be edited interactively by the user until a CR (carriage return) or LF (line feed) character is received.

When selecting this mode you normally select the ICANON, ECHO, and ECHOE options:

    options.c_lflag |= (ICANON | ECHO | ECHOE);

Choosing Raw Input

Raw input is unprocessed. Input characters are passed through exactly as they are received, when they are received. Generally you'll deselect the ICANON, ECHO, ECHOE, and ISIG options when using raw input:

    options.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO | ECHOE | ISIG);

A Note About Input Echo

Never enable input echo (ECHO, ECHOE) when sending commands to a MODEM or other computer that is echoing characters, as you will generate a feedback loop between the two serial interfaces!

Input Options

The input modes member c_iflag controls any input processing that is done to characters received on the port. Like the c_cflag field, the final value stored in c_iflag is the bitwise OR of the desired options.

Setting Input Parity Options

You should enable input parity checking when you have enabled parity in the c_cflag member (PARENB). The revelant constants for input parity checking are INPCK, IGNPAR, PARMRK , and ISTRIP. Generally you will select INPCK and ISTRIP to enable checking and stripping of the parity bit:

    options.c_iflag |= (INPCK | ISTRIP);

IGNPAR is a somewhat dangerous option that tells the serial driver to ignore parity errors and pass the incoming data through as if no errors had occurred. This can be useful for testing the quality of a communications link, but in general is not used for practical reasons.

PARMRK causes parity errors to be 'marked' in the input stream using special characters. If IGNPAR is enabled, a NUL character (000 octal) is sent to your program before every character with a parity error. Otherwise, a DEL (177 octal) and NUL character is sent along with the bad character.

Setting Software Flow Control

Software flow control is enabled using the IXON, IXOFF, and IXANY constants:

    options.c_iflag |= (IXON | IXOFF | IXANY);

To disable software flow control simply mask those bits:

    options.c_iflag &= ~(IXON | IXOFF | IXANY);

The XON (start data) and XOFF (stop data) characters are defined in the c_cc array described below.

Output Options

The c_oflag member contains output filtering options. Like the input modes, you can select processed or raw data output.

Choosing Processed Output

Processed output is selected by setting the OPOST option in the c_oflag member:

    options.c_oflag |= OPOST;

Of all the different options, you will only probably use the ONLCR option which maps newlines into CR-LF pairs. The rest of the output options are primarily historic and date back to the time when line printers and terminals could not keep up with the serial data stream!

Choosing Raw Output

Raw output is selected by resetting the OPOST option in the c_oflag member:

    options.c_oflag &= ~OPOST;

When the OPOST option is disabled, all other option bits in c_oflag are ignored.

Control Characters

The c_cc character array contains control character definitions as well as timeout parameters. Constants are defined for every element of this array.

Setting Software Flow Control Characters

The VSTART and VSTOP elements of the c_cc array contain the characters used for software flow control. Normally they should be set to DC1 (021 octal) and DC3 (023 octal) which represent the ASCII standard XON and XOFF characters.

Setting Read Timeouts

UNIX serial interface drivers provide the ability to specify character and packet timeouts. Two elements of the c_cc array are used for timeouts: VMIN and VTIME. Timeouts are ignored in canonical input mode or when the NDELAY option is set on the file via open or fcntl.

VMIN specifies the minimum number of characters to read. If it is set to 0, then the VTIME value specifies the time to wait for every character read. Note that this does not mean that a read call for N bytes will wait for N characters to come in. Rather, the timeout will apply to the first character and the read call will return the number of characters immediately available (up to the number you request).

If VMIN is non-zero, VTIME specifies the time to wait for the first character read. If a character is read within the time given, any read will block (wait) until all VMIN characters are read. That is, once the first character is read, the serial interface driver expects to receive an entire packet of characters (VMIN bytes total). If no character is read within the time allowed, then the call to read returns 0. This method allows you to tell the serial driver you need exactly N bytes and any read call will return 0 or N bytes. However, the timeout only applies to the first character read, so if for some reason the driver misses one character inside the N byte packet then the read call could block forever waiting for additional input characters.

VTIME specifies the amount of time to wait for incoming characters in tenths of seconds. If VTIME is set to 0 (the default), reads will block (wait) indefinitely unless the NDELAY option is set on the port with open or fcntl.

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